Seabiscuit
champion thoroughbred racehorse in the United States
Seabiscuit (May 23, 1933 – May 17, 1947) was a champion thoroughbred racehorse in the United States who became the top money-winning racehorse up to the 1940s. He beat the 1937 Triple Crown winner, War Admiral, by four lengths in a two-horse special at Pimlico and was voted American Horse of the Year for 1938.
A small horse, at 15.2 hands high, Seabiscuit had an inauspicious start to his racing career, winning only a quarter of his first 40 races, but became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many Americans during the Great Depression.
Seabiscuit has been the subject of numerous books and films, including Seabiscuit: the Lost Documentary (1939); the Shirley Temple film The Story of Seabiscuit (1949); a book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (1999) by Laura Hillenbrand; and a film adaptation of Hillenbrand's book, Seabiscuit (2003), that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. There is also a street in Indian Trail, North Carolina named after him.
Background and early days
Seabiscuit was foaled on May 23, 1933 at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky. He was a result of owner Gladys Phipps' breeding of the infamous Hard Tack and one of her mares Swing On. Seabiscuit was named for his father; "sea biscuit" is another name for hardtack, a type of cracker eaten by sailors.
The bay colt grew up at Claiborne Farm where he was trained. He was undersized, knobby-kneed, and given to sleeping and eating for long periods.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1500356. VIAF identifies the subject as 316600257. The Library of Congress control number is no2017034595. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1947, 1937 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seabiscuit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.